“Kaia knows how to play and has a lot of big wins. She has had a great career,” she added. “We always have tough matches, so I am just happy to get through. She was hitting such big returns so I wanted to hit bigger second serves.”

Williams will move on to play No. 8 seed Karolina Pliskova in the quarterfinals. As noted by Yahoo, the two previously faced off at the U.S. Open, where the Czech player defeated the Compton native 2-6, 6-7 in the 2016 semifinals.